Jony Ive on the spirituality of careful design

Jony Ive recently spoke with Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison at Stripe's annual conference. Jony oversaw design at Apple in its golden age under Steve Jobs.

The whole interview is worth watching in full, but this story in particular was inspiring (around 11:20):

Jony: I remember working on a Sunday afternoon. I was working on some absurd detail in terms of packaging. Compared to what you guys do, this will seem so trivial. But I had such a clear awareness that in designing a certain solution, for example how we managed a cable that's in a box, that designing that, I knew that millions of people would engage with this little tab. I could either make the cable an easy thing to unwrap – sorry that is such a trivial example isn't it.

Patrick: But you can describe the purpose of that as it shaves five seconds off the unwrapping of every cable and multiply that across however many millions. But I get the sense from you that's not why you do it. It's not this utilitarian multiplication and calculation – there's something spiritual in it for you. What's the spiritual thing?

Jony: I think the spiritual thing is that I believe when somebody unwrapped that box and took out that cable, they'll think, "Somebody gave a shit about me." I think that's a spiritual thing.

He continued:

Jony: That Sunday afternoon, when I really should've been out with my boys, and I'm worrying about this, I did feel a connection and an excitement that somebody was going to experience something that they don't even know exists yet. Even though it was a small thing, it really did come genuinely from a place of love and of care. Steve spoke about this. He spoke about it way more eloquently than I can. He talked about, when you make something with love and with care, even though the people you've made it for, you don't know their story, they don't know your story, you'll never even shake their hand, but when they use the product that you've made, it's a way – the way Steve expressed it, which I thought was so beautiful – it's a way of expressing our gratitude to the species. And I thought that was such an incredibly thoughtful, beautiful, and authentic declaration.

There is a lot of talk about "taste" in software these days. Many will claim it, but this story was a great illustration what it really takes to produce "tasteful" software.

As someone said on X, this isn't a speech from Jony, it's a sermon.